Krewe du Vieux and Football

This weekend was great fun! After a stress-filled week of trying to figure out my life (aka my class schedule), I relaxed, slept, and had fun New Orleans-style. [Don't worry... or get excited... New Orleans-style fun does not always include raucous drinking and/or flashing.]

Friday, after lovely Preventative Tropical Medicine, I headed over to Handsome Willy's for their free hard-shell crabs. No, I did not eat said crabs, but because they were free, everyone was there. Hung out for a bit there until the rain and miserable cold finally forced us inside to Janna's to meet her adorable guinea pig. After much oohing and aahing, TJ, Katherine, Janna, Dawn and I headed to get some food (1. because hard-shell crabs do not fill one up, and 2. TJ and I were frankly disgusted by the smell of crabs). We ended up at Juan's Flying Burrito on Magazine and I don't think a burrito has ever tasted so good. The talking died as soon as we got our food!

Saturday dawned - cold again. I headed with Emily and TJ to a TA session for SPSS. I LOVE SPSS!!! It is quite possibly the coolest program in the world! It's a database analyzer that is Excel times 1,000,000. I don't think I need to say more.

Saturday lunch consisted of my leftover burrito. The burrito lived up to its potential - even half warm and a day old, it was yummy. Lazed around the house for a bit (cleaned my room), then got ready for my first Mardi Gras Parade.

The Krewe du Vieux parades around Marigny and the French Quarter on a Saturday night, so it is not quite as kid-friendly as some of the other parades. But, it is great fun! Although it was FREEZING cold (look at the pictures), Alana, Laura, Megan and I had a raucous time trying to get as many beads and throws as possible. It's true, beads may not be worth 50 cents, but they are in high demand and we fought to get the most and the best (although we didn't do so well - there were 2 adorable kids who got almost every throw and good necklace - but they were adorable and gave us the beads they didn't want!).

After being outside in almost freezing weather, we headed back to my house on the streetcar to warm up. Did I mention that, although we planned on taking the streetcar down to the Quarter, it NEVER CAME, so we walked the whole way, bringing our hours outside up to 4?!? We, needless to say, were very cold and it took us several more hours, some warm pizza, blankets and a heater to finally warm back up again! Emily joined us to watch "Hairspray," although we never actually watched it. But we made plans to watch it on Sunday (which we did).

Sunday dawned, a little warmer, but still cold. The Patriots played the Chargers and won :(. Then, in a most interesting game, the New York Giants beat the Green Bay Packers in overtime! I also managed to get Megan, Alana, and Laura very invested in the game! So, Superbowl Sunday should be very interesting, with an undefeated team and a 10wins in a row team. Go Giants!